With a growing array of restaurants, bars and shops, downtown Raleigh's rebound has landed it a new accolade from a statewide group of city planners: Great Main Street.

The North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association gave the honor at its annual Great Places awards ceremony Wednesday.

"Fayetteville Street is a great public space where all of Raleigh and Wake County can come together, and we are proud to have been recognized by APA-NC,” Mayor Nancy McFarlane said at the event.

The award nomination points to the turnaround driven in part by the 2006 reopening of Fayetteville Street to traffic and the renovation of City Plaza: "The historic commercial spine of North Carolina’s capital city, Fayetteville Street has been transformed in less than 10 years from an emblem of urban decline to a dramatic symbol of urban success. By day, Fayetteville Street bustles with business, commerce and government activity. At night, it pulses with youthful energy fed by the restaurants, bars and nightclubs.”

Other "Great Main Streets" recognized were Fayetteville’s Hay Street, Davidson’s Main Street and Blowing Rock’s Main Street.

From staff writer Austin Baird:

Raleigh roosters are safe, at least for now.

The City Council's law and public safety committee decided Tuesday to uphold an ordinance that allows roosters inside city limits.

The council was considering a citywide rooster ban because of a recent uptick in noise complaints related to crowing.

Scott Voorhees argued that the problem is overblown. He owns a rooster and several hens, and a neighbor complained to the city about the noise. He says his rooster crows in the morning and a few times during the day, but rarely makes noise at night and never louder than a barking dog.

Julia Zavada also owns a rooster and several hens. She said roosters are indispensable for chicken owners because they protect against hawks, snakes and insects.

Zavada sound-proofed her coop and locks up the fowl each night, and she said most owners are responsible like her. "If you're responsible, there's no problem," she said.

The council agreed and made no change, though they said city workers will continue monitoring the issue to determine if a change is needed later. "We don't have anything against roosters," said Councilman Mary Ann Baldwin.

It’s Sunshine Week, the annual observance where the media touts the importance of public records and transparency. Often that takes the form of stories highlighting situations where some entity is refusing to release records.

But here on the Raleigh city government beat, I don’t have much to complain about. In other communities, I’ve had to make multiple phone calls to get a simple town council meeting agenda. Raleigh has those available online for nearly every elected or appointed board you can think of.

The city has won awards for open government, and leaders are working on a new Open Raleigh platform to have more data online.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how forthcoming city officials here can be with records. Last week, I was trying to confirm a union group’s claim that Raleigh’s Civil Service Commission – the appointed board that hears employee appeals – almost never rules in favor of an employee.

I expected the board’s actions to be largely secretive – the blanket “it’s a confidential personnel matter” response often provided by government agencies. But after a quick call to the city clerk’s office, assistant deputy clerk Ralph Puccini had five years of meeting minutes in my email inbox within the hour.

That allowed our story to have solid facts, in turn allowing our readers to have an informed debate on whether or not the Civil Service Commission needs an overhaul.

Two of downtown Raleigh’s oldest trees will come down next week – one each in Moore Square and Nash Square. The move follows a tree assessment conducted last fall.

“While we are always reluctant to see the removal of large, vigorous trees, the data you collected and our visual inspection from the ground both identify the need to remove these two trees due to their impaired structural integrity in high traffic areas,” state forester Nancy Stairs wrote in a letter to the city this month.

At Moore Square, the survey found major decay in a willow oak at the southeast corner of the park. The Nash Square willow oak is at the south end of the square near Martin Street. It was damaged in a storm last summer. Both trees need to be chopped down since their condition is a safety hazard, the foresters found.

A Raleigh City Council committee will review the appeals procedure for fired city employees after union members complained Tuesday that the process almost never results in an employee returning to work.

Members of the N.C. Public Service Workers Union remain upset about the 2011 firing of Raleigh sanitation worker Shirley Venable, who was accused of threatening her boss. Venable has denied making threats and said she was ridiculed on the job after becoming a victim of domestic violence.

Ashaki Binta, a union organizer, asked the council to give Venable her job back and investigate the city’s Civil Service Commission, which handled the appeal. Last November, the commission voted 3-2 in favor of Venable’s appeal, but a successful appeal requires four votes. Two of the seven board members were absent that day.

“What is the purpose of the Civil Service Commission if it’s just to rubber stamp every decision management has made?” Binta said, adding that it hasn’t reinstated anyone in years.

Council members said they won’t reopen the Venable case but will discuss the appeals process in an upcoming meeting of its law and public safety committee.

The N&O's Josh Shaffer wrote about the Venable case last year. Read his column here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/11/18/2493347/shaffer-years-of-taking-trash.html

I've always thought that wind gusts seemed to be stronger in downtown Raleigh than in my neighborhood a few miles outside the city. I never quite knew for sure.

Turns out I was right. On windy winter days, we can blame Fayetteville Street's tall buildings for that extra blast of cold on the way to lunch. City planners point to the PNC Plaza building as one of the biggest culprits, since its 33 stories of glass and steel rise directly from the street front.

The winds might die down with future additions to Raleigh's skyline. Under the development code the city council adopted last week, new buildings' tallest sections will be stepped back from the street. That means the part of the building closest to the street will only be a few floors high.

The new code currently requires several of those step-backs, but developers are concerned that could cost them too much square footage on upper floors. The council will look at relaxing the requirement when they tweak the new code this summer.

"We’re looking at just having a step-back on the third floor," Planning Director Mitchell Silver said Monday.

That design would still help reduce the downtown wind tunnel effect, he added.

Hundreds of Raleigh residents and fans of the city have sent Twitter posts to actor Zach Galifianakis in the past day or so.

The tweets direct the former N.C. State University student and "Hangover" star to the Raleigh Economic Development website, where the city's boosters have a simple favor to ask: Make a sign with a "saying of your choice as to why you think Raleigh is the place to be" and pose with it in a photo.

Economic Development director James Sauls wants to bring some star power to the city's booth at the South by Southwest Conference next month in Austin. He'd like to have a life-size cutout of the actor holding the sign.

Former NFL players and Raleigh residents Terrence and Torry Holt are already on board with the project, offering Galifianakis a signed football if he participates.

Meanwhile, the Twitter trend continues to build under the hashtag #zachraleigh, with each post offering a unique plea to the actor.

The best one I've seen so far came from Raleigh City Councilman Russ Stephenson:

"Zack @Galifianakisz You served me @ Amedeos & I served you @ Sadlacks. Now lets serve #Raleigh"

Here's the link to the Raleigh Economic Development page explaining the request: http://www.raleigh4u.com/connect/zach-galifianakis.

After three years of planning and 47 public meetings, the Raleigh City Council on Monday approved a new development code that promotes a walkable, transit-friendly city with high density, mixed-use districts.

The unanimous vote will make the new code – known officially as the Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO – effective Sept. 1. The 300-page document has guidelines governing everything from open spaces to bike parking, even determining how close buildings should be to the street.

But discussions on the code are far from over. It still must go through the mapping phase, when a host of new zoning designations will be matched to the appropriate commercial or mixed-use district (residential zoning won’t change). City staff and interested residents will get training on how the code works. And council members said they’d like to revisit certain guidelines and make tweaks if needed.

“Adoption is not the end of the UDO, it’s the beginning of the UDO,” Councilwoman Mary Ann Baldwin said of Monday’s vote.

Read more about the code in my article from Monday's paper: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/18/2688290/new-development-code-aims-to-remake.html

Corner stores can often prove controversial. Some neighbors like a walking-distance spot to grab a snack or some smokes, but others see their store as a magnet for crime.

One Raleigh neighborhood managed to force its quickie mart out of business after years of complaints. City workers this month began razing a longtime shop east of downtown that critics said was a magnet for crime.

Raleigh’s Community Development department bought Big John’s Community Grocery at the corner of Edenton Street and Idlewild Avenue in July. The city paid $199,000 for the store built in 1920, according to property records. The store owner's lease was ended soon after.

“It was acquired because there had been concerns from the community and also from a lot of the police officers we worked with,” community development director Michele Grant said.

When Big John’s applied for its alcohol sales permit in 2004, both a Presbyterian church and the College Park/Idlewild Community Watch opposed the application, state records show. Raleigh police forwarded their own objections based on the concerns. Some neighbors reported seeing drug deals at the site. The store still received a permit.

The city is preparing the lot for sale. It will take bids on the property from developers who want to build a single-family home there, Grant said.

A discussion of animal control policies led to an unlikely topic for the Raleigh City Council on Tuesday: rooster regulations.

It turns out there’s nothing on the books that prevents Raleigh residents from keeping the birds. But an ill-timed “cock-a-doodle-doo” might run afoul of noise ordinances, and individual roosters could be declared a public nuisance, the city attorney said.

Councilman John Odom said he’s received three calls about noisy roosters in the past year. City staff also received a complaint from the Boylan Heights neighborhood, where the rooster’s owner was willing to work with neighbors and give up the bird.

Odom asked city staff to draft a rooster ban – already in effect in neighboring cities like Cary that allow backyard chickens.

Councilwoman Mary Ann Baldwin said she wasn’t sure new rules are needed. “Do you want to be the rooster killer in Raleigh?” she joked to Odom. “Don’t you think it’s a little extreme to ban roosters?”

“In a city, in close quarters?” responded Councilman Randy Stagner.

The council’s Law and Public Safety Committee will take up the issue again at a future meeting.